EARTHQUAKE SAFETY : Diary of a Shaken-Up Homeowner, Part I: Surveying the Scene

Although I’ve written a number of articles about the value of earthquake-proofing a home, I’ve always had a casual attitude about doing my own place. After all, I’ve rationalized, our 68-year-old house withstood the Long Beach quake of 1933, the Northridge shaker of 1994 and every temblor in between.

But my wife is besieged each time the ground rumbles by the nagging worry that next time will be our turn.

And, truth be told, last month’s quake did shake some sense into me.

Like many people in Southern California, most of what we have is invested in our home and its contents.

To lose the house or its furnishings would be financially crushing. To lose the irreplaceable objects that we have gathered around us in 22 years together--our daughter’s first oil painting, our family photographs, the glass and ceramics we collect--would be emotionally devastating.

There’s one other consideration as well. A survey of hospital emergency rooms after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked the Bay Area showed that most of the 1,200 quake-related injuries treated were caused when people were hit by books, mirrors, pictures, tall cabinets and other items in their homes.

If anyone in my family was injured by falling objects that easily could have been secured, I’d never forgive myself.

So we’re going ahead with our “earthquaking” project.

I’ll be keeping a log of material costs, time spent, problems and surprises encountered and (we hope) overcome: All are things I’ll pass along in this and subsequent installments in hopes that what we learn will help you with your earthquake-safety projects.

The first task in any earthquake-proofing project, and the subject of this report, is to walk through the house and garage and around the lot, inspecting the place to determine where the problems are and what has to be done. You can’t get down to the nuts-and-bolts business of securing your home and the things in it until you know what must be done.

We made our inspection after discussing the process with Tom Carroll, president of AmeriSpec. The Orange-based company is the parent of a nationwide network of independently owned home-inspection businesses. Carroll has seen, or heard of, just about every twist and wrinkle there is.

I was happily thinking that I only had to figure out how to tie down a water heater and keep a few heavy items from falling off shelves.

That’s what most people think when they consider making their house quake safe: that everything they need to do is inside the main structure.

But it isn’t so, said Carroll, who pointed out that I should also:

* Look in my yard to see if there are power or telephone lines that could be knocked down by a falling tree or whipping branches.

* Examine my garage to see what is stuffed into the overhead rafters that would fall on my head if I were inside when a big quake hit.

* Consolidate all the flammables in the house, garage and workshop into one or two areas away from doorways that might be used as escape routes.

* Check the drainage around the foundation of the house to avoid post-quake leakage and water damage.

* Check my fences to make sure they are stable and wouldn’t fall and injure anyone who happened to be in the back yard during a quake.

After thanking Carroll for making the job a lot more involved than I’d thought it would be, I drove home, stood at the front curb, surveyed my domain--and immediately spotted Job One.

We have two telephone lines into the house, and both pass over the front yard and through the middle of a shade tree that has grown up around them since I planted it five years ago.

In a big quake, the tree wouldn’t even have to fall to break the lines--whipping branches would probably do the job. The tree will have to be pruned to make way for the phone lines. That will make it more likely that we’ll have phone service after a quake.

I got good marks from Carroll for my one piece of pre-Northridge quake-proofing: I not only know where my gas and electric meters are, I have attached a shut-off wrench to the gas meter and showed my wife and daughter how to use it to turn off the gas supply if that becomes necessary.

But as part of the current quake safety effort, I am also going to make sure they know that the thick wire crossing over the driveway in front of the garage is the 240-volt service line for the house and that they should stay clear of it if it were to break and fall to the ground in a quake. (A 240-volt jolt isn’t terribly dangerous, but why take chances? I’ll also make sure our daughter knows that there are high-voltage wires across the street; they’re the ones that are in the top row on most utility poles. Don’t mess with them if they fall, because they do carry enough juice to fry a person.)

I’m not worried about the location of our service line, but if it passed over a doorway or a main route out of the house, I’d probably call the electric company and ask that it be rerouted.

A spokesman for Southern California Edison said the utility will respond to such requests and will attach the service line at a new location on the house or garage. The homeowner, however, is responsible for getting the power line from that new attachment point to the electric meter, a process that would probably involve hiring an electrician and getting a city electrical permit and inspection.

My other important outside chore will be to strap down the water heater. We had it put in its own little room at the back of the house when we added on, so we’re not worried about it falling over and spilling water inside the house in an earthquake; the concern is that a falling water heater can rip loose the gas line that feeds it and ignite a fire. Fires from broken gas lines can cause nearly as much damage as a quake itself--more if firefighters can’t get around to knock down the flames.

There is one major earthquake-proofing task I’m not sure I’ll pursue: bolting my house to its foundation. Because our house was built before the building codes were changed in the aftermath of the Long Beach earthquake, our house is not fastened to its foundation--except in back, where we added on when we bought it in 1987. Instead of bolting the frame to the foundation, as has been the practice for 60 years, builders of pre-1933 residences in Southern California typically laid the mud sill directly on top of the foundation, worked up from there and trusted that the weight of the structure would keep it from sliding around.

I’ll check out what needs to be done and how much it will cost to do it before making a decision on that project.

We’re lucky so far as other outside inspection points go: We don’t have a heavy block wall that could fall over and injure people; our lot slopes nicely away from the foundation of the house, so we wouldn’t have a drainage problem, and while our stucco-coated brick chimney could tumble in a big quake, it is built entirely on the outside of the house. That means it is unlikely that falling brick would crash through the living room ceiling.

If you’ve got a masonry chimney that goes up into your attic and then through the roof to the outside, Carroll and several builders suggest nailing plywood sheets to the beams in the attic to make a solid floor all around the chimney. That way, if it did crumble, the bricks would be stopped by the plywood and wouldn’t crash through the plaster or drywall ceiling and brain someone in the room below.

The fix for a block wall isn’t quite so easy: If you’ve got a masonry wall, test it by grabbing the top at one end and shaking. If the wall doesn’t wobble, it’s probably OK. If it does, you have three choices: ignore it and hope for the best; tear it down and have a new one built, or have a contractor install pilasters--masonry buttresses--all along its length to strengthen it against toppling in an earthquake.

Whatever you do, however, don’t fill a hollow block wall with concrete or earth to strengthen it; it will just make it heavier and more likely to cause damage or injury if it falls. And don’t try to install reinforcing rod--rebar--in an unreinforced wall. The rebar doesn’t do any good unless sunk well into the foundation, so it has to be put in when the wall is built. Retrofitting doesn’t help much, Carroll said.

After walking our lot and discovering that there isn’t too much I have to do outside the house to get ready for the Big One, I moved my attention inside and discovered that at least a full weekend’s work awaits.

Chores on the list:

* Fixing latches on the kitchen cabinets so they don’t fly open and dump our dishes and dry goods on the floor.

* Securing the refrigerator so it doesn’t roll out of its alcove and spew its contents.

* Fastening down the collectibles in our glass-shelved display cases and the electronic gear in the entertainment cabinet.

* Clearing flammables from our escape routes.

* Fastening the entertainment center to reduce the chances of it toppling and dumping our TV and stereo equipment.

* Figuring out a way to cushion our china, which isn’t on display, and our antique cranberry glass stemware, which is.

* Ensuring that bedrooms and bathrooms are quake-safe.

That last should be an easy chore for us. Our decorating scheme avoids the use of such things as heavy mirrors and pictures that could fall on sleepers. And in a late-blooming mania for orderliness, I recently organized our closets with built-in shelving that moved all the heavy items to floor level and left the upper part of the closets for lightweight things such as sweater boxes and sleeping bags.

My wife doesn’t think I’ll get halfway through it all in a weekend, but I’ve assured her that with some advance planning and a weeknight trip to the home improvement store to gather material in advance, it’ll be no sweat.

On subsequent weekends I’ll be attending to more onerous but less pressing quake-safety tasks that include securing the storage boxes that line the back of the garage; doing something to keep the tools adorning the walls of my shop from falling on my head if I happen to be working there when the San Andreas opens up and finding a place to set up an emergency food and water supply center that we can get to even if the walls fall down.

We’ll keep you posted.